D E C I D U O U !S TREES. 363 



The form of the silver poplar is irregularly squarish, its foliage 

 abundant and massy, and its branches light-colored, and of an 

 ashy-green hue, smooth, and cheerful-looking in winter. It grows 

 luxuriantly in almost any good moist soil, and becomes a spreading 

 tree of great size in less time than any healthy tree we know of. 

 Cuttings from this tree take root freely, and make good trees ; but it 

 is usually grown from suckers. It is said to be a longer-lived tree 

 than others of its species. For wide avenues, or to stand out on a 

 lawn, it is a superb tree, especially where the subsoil is a rich moist 

 clay. But it takes up too much room to be suitable on any small 

 grounds. We know of no tree that will so quickly make a noble 

 shade for pasture fields. 



The Lombardy Poplar. P.fastigiata. — This model of a syl- 

 van sentinel is one of the most peculiar of trees ; having the least 

 diameter of head in proportion to its height of any tree known. 

 This slender form has made it most useful in landscape gardening ; 

 its spiry top being employed to form a central point in groups of 

 trees, a back-ground relief to level-lined architecture, or to break, 

 with its exceptional erectness, the more monotonous outlines of 

 other trees. When first introduced mto this country the rage for 

 it was so great that town streets, and country roads, and farm-house 

 yards, were everywhere filled with them ; but familiarity has bred 

 contempt. It has been found that, though a tree of most original 

 and picturesque character, it is not comparable to our native trees 

 in variety of beauty, in usefulness as a shade tree, in cleanliness, or 

 in healthfulness. Worms on the foliage, and borers in the w^ood, 

 love the tree and kill it. It has become so unhealthy that it is not 

 safe to plant one near the house, where its dirty fallen leaves would 

 be annoying even were it a healthy tree free from worms. But its 

 club-hke form, and the vertical shadow lines of its foliage, are so 

 unique, and contrast so picturesquely now and then with round- 

 headed groups of trees, that we must still use it, away from the 

 house, in ornamental plantations. And it may be that the plagues 

 which have infested it will diminish, and yet leave the Lombardy 

 poplar with its normal beauty. In Italy, and in England, it is one 

 of the loftiest of trees, attaining a height of from one hundred to 



